Sleeping like a baby

Whoever coined the phrase "sleeping like a baby" clearly did not have a baby. Babies sleep like shit, and so do their parents. But the parents of three year olds? Other than an earlier than desired wake up time once in a while, we often get to sleep like... I don't know, pick something that sleeps better than babies, i.e., any other creature on the planet. You get spoiled. That wonderful dreamland gives you a false sense of security, like this is how your life is going to be, forever and ever. Amen.

And then one day you go pick up your kid at daycare and she's sitting on the lap of one of the teachers, looking like one sad, sick little girl. You immediately make the call to go straight to the walk-in clinic where an ear infection is diagnosed. The doctor looks at you as though you're neglectful when you mention that said kid said her ear was hurting on Saturday but you decided to take a "wait and see" approach because there was no fever, leading you to believe it was the congestion of a cold leading to her discomfort. This same doctor looked at you like a hypochondriac last time you were there with the child and a sore ear, and scolded you saying you shouldn't bring her in unless there's a fever. There's just no pleasing that bitch. You want to tell her to take her condescension and shove it, but think better of it because you don't have the prescription in hand. What kind of example would that set for the child anyway?

A week goes by, the child recovers but the excitement of a long weekend further disrupts what you now laughingly call the sleep schedule. You look back wistfully at that time, lo one week and a few days ago, when you knew what it was like to have an uninterrupted night's sleep that did not abruptly end at the ass crack of dawn with a plaintive call for mommy. Then someone at work offhandedly mentions that they "slept like a baby" on the weekend, and you launch into a tirade remarkably similar to the one above, leaving them with a rather bewildered expression. "Sleeping like a baby," you mutter as you walk away. "What a crock of shit THAT is."